The New ‘X-Men’ Sequel Title Might Have Just Been Revealed

The X-Men are slowly taking over. On TV, we’re getting FX’s Legion, on the big screen, we’re getting Logan, a Deadpool sequel, and New Mutants. Even after the decidedly dismal X-Men: Apocalypse, the film series that makes up the spine of the X-Men franchise is still planning on a further installment, and now we might know the title.

We’ve known about the title X-Men: Supernova for a while now, but for a bit it seemed like it was the working title for the New Mutants movie. But the most recent issue of the publication Production Weekly now has “New Mutants” and “Supernova” listed as two separate entities, indicating that there’s going to be another movie added to the queue alongside all these others. Not only that, but the job site My Entertainment World has listed both films as separate projects on its webpage as well. I don’t know about you, but it sure sounds like this is where the official series is going next.

We also know that there will be an X-Men movie shooting in Montreal (which is where the last two were shot) this spring — it could be New Mutants if that one is being fast-tracked, but since that one hasn’t been completely cast, it might be more likely that it’s Supernova. As to what it’s about, Bryan Singer has given us some clues. He recently said that he’d like to go “interstellar” with the series, and there’s one very big way they could do that: Dark Phoenix.

Long story short, in that comic arc Jean Grey is exposed to cosmic radiation that unlocks the full potential of her powers. In order to control it, she sets up these mental barriers that the villain Mastermind tricks her into breaking them, of course, and she transforms into Dark Phoenix. Hungry for more power, she goes to space and eats the energy of a star, unknowingly killing an entire species living on a nearby planet using the star as their sun. The galactic council is convened, and it’s decided that she needs to be destroyed. And what are supernovas made out of? (Stars, the answer is stars.)

The story has been told in the movies before, disappointingly used in X-Men: The Last Stand, but since the timeline has been retconned and a new Jean Grey has been introduced (Sophie Turner), there’s no reason for the story not to go there. We’ll know for sure once Fox gives us an official announcement.